Friday, July 27, 2007

A whole Lotta WTF

MADISON, Wis. - Three men who dug up a young woman's corpse to have sex with it after seeing her obituary photo cannot be charged with attempted sexual assault because Wisconsin has no law against necrophilia, an appeals court ruled Thursday. A judge was correct to dismiss the charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21, because lawmakers never intended to criminalize sex with a corpse, the District 4 Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 ruling.The three men went to a cemetery in Cassville in southwestern Wisconsin on Sept. 2 to remove the body of Laura Tennessen, 20, who had been killed the week before in a motorcycle crash.They said the men had seen an obituary of Tennessen with her photo and wanted to dig up her body to have sexual intercourse. Such an act is known as necrophilia.

There's something inherently wrong with someone who looks at an obituary picture and thinks "God, she's hot. Let's go have sex with her corpse." This is a sad day for Wisconsin, for the Tennessen family, and for our system of law in general.I repeat: "If you knowingly wish to have sex with a dead body. You are fucked up, and should be locked away."

The men were charged with attempted third-degree sexual assault and misdemeanor attempted theft charges. But Grant County Circuit Judge George Curry dismissed the sexual assault charges in September, saying no Wisconsin law addressed necrophilia. Prosecutors appealed his ruling.At issue is a provision in the sexual assault law saying criminal penalties apply "whether a victim is dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse."The appeals court said the law was ambiguous but the most reasonable interpretation was that it does not ban necrophilia. Instead, the court said, the law was meant to make sure prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in rape-murder cases in which the victim ends up dead.

The ambiguity, of course, doesn't exist. The wording of the law is crystal clear. But, as is often the case with liberal judges, what the law says doesn't matter so much as what they WANT the law to say. This imaginary distinction would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting. Murdering your rape victim doesn't in any way, shape, or form protect you from a rape charge once the body is found. No one I have ever heard of has raised the defense "I can't be charged with rape, cause she's dead!" Evidence of forcable sex in a murder victim is often considered ipso facto evidence of rape. The law was made to erase the need to prove a victim was alive to charge with sexual assault. That it say penalties apply "whether or not the victim is alive", not "whether or not the attacker killed the victim before or after the assault", clearly puts this crap to rest. Both judges are pretending that there's some magical Bubblegum Clause that specifies that a murder has to be involved, when the law clearly is made to punish sexual contact with a victim who can't say no due to death.

As the old saying goes, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

We've gone from "as long as it's between consenting adults" to "as long as she can't say no"....